No. 2: There is a Turning Point

Jessica L. Jones ’06 proves to be a far cry from the Tori Spelling circa “Beverly Hills 90210”-type character that many might expect the sunny Californian to be.

Seriously, listen: “I love anime and science fiction and I am kind of obsessed with ‘Lord of the Rings.’ I did trivia competitions in high school, so I could tell you the capital of pretty much every country. It’s so nerdy, but you end up having these long arguments with people over lunch because everyone here just likes to argue for the sake of it.”

Sure enough, Jones is just a normal Harvard kid doing her own over-achieving thing. She checks her email compulsively and relies on bottomless cups of coffee to keep her focused. She pulls all-nighters. She procrastinates by spending too much time in the dining hall and on facebook.com. She wears PJs to breakfast. She, too, has thought at one point or another that she was Harvard’s admissions mistake.

That said, this Mather House senior has a merit badge most of us don’t. Jones was one of 24 juniors inducted into the Harvard chapter of the national collegiate honors society, Phi Beta Kappa, last spring. Quite a twist, if you consider her humble beginnings here at Harvard.

“I wanted to leave my freshman fall,” she says. “The culture was just so different.” A native of Manhattan Beach, Calif., Jones started college in the same boat as many other warm-weather-loving, East-coast-bound soon-to-be-Ivy-Leaguers. The adjustment wasn’t an easy one for her. But four years later, Jones dreads the thought of leaving the hallowed halls she now calls home.

She can’t recall what it was that triggered her change of heart. “I went home, and it was a complete turning point,” she says. “There weren’t people around all the time like at school.”

Having attended a large public high school, Jones was accustomed to lots of social interaction and so her involvement on campus upon arrival was kind of a given. As Co-President of Mather HoCo, Jones spends all of her time on campus. “A lot of my friends are in the Quad, so I crash their Stein Clubs and go to parties there when I can,” she says.

But it’s not just Stein Clubs and Quad parties that keep Jones from wanting to leave. She loves the house system here as well. “I visited a friend at NYU and they all live off-campus after freshman year,” Jones said.

“It’s great that they grow up quickly. But here, everyone is so ambitious and doing so many things already, so I think it’s great that they give us this gift of three more years of childhood. I want to stay here as long as I can.”

Jones went on to describe the Mather House community as somewhat of a security blanket for her. “My friends tease me because I’m at every meal for the full meal time,” says Jones. “I don’t even particularly like the food, but it’s just where everyone comes to socialize. I’m very worried about missing this next year. It scares me that I won’t have constant access to dozens of friends at all hours of the day and night.”

When she isn’t studying or partying, she’s busy singing Mather’s praises. “My freshman year was the start of the Mather Renaissance, as our House Masters like to call it,” says Jones. “There was a very active HoCo that year and it’s gotten even better over the years. We went around to freshmen and lots of them were crying because they hadn’t gotten into Mather. That was really amazing.”

And that’s one reason we should love Harvard (crying).